


7 | 9

by GenericUsername01



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, Drug Use, M/M, Relationship Problems, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Seven Deadly Sins, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vices and Virtues, anger issues, fruitages of the spirit, ignores tfp, soul colors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-02 05:28:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17258429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Every child was born with two bands around their wrists: their vice on their left wrist and their virtue on their right. One in every five children was born with four bands, though, with those of their soulmate’s just below their own.Both the Holmes boys had four bands, and their parents couldn’t be happier for them.





	1. Part 1

The colors varied by culture, of course. Different religions had different sins and virtues, and different colors associated with them. The study of soul color anthropology was a respected field. It had been found that a person’s soul colors corresponded with those of the religion and culture they would adhere to for the majority of their life. This created some misunderstandings in the cases of religious converts and emigrants.

The Holmeses weren’t particularly religious one way or the other, but they were culturally Christian, and so they got the Christian vices and virtues.

There are seven deadly sins and nine fruitages of the spirit in the Bible.

The vices:

  * Lust
  * Gluttony
  * Greed
  * Laziness
  * Wrath
  * Envy
  * Pride



The virtues:

  * Love
  * Joy
  * Peace
  * Patience
  * Kindness
  * Goodness
  * Faith
  * Mildness
  * Self-control



Every child was born with two bands around their wrists: their vice on their left wrist and their virtue on their right. One in every five children was born with four bands, though, with those of their soulmate’s just below their own.

Both the Holmes boys had four bands, and their parents couldn’t be happier for them.

Sherlock’s own bands were purple for Pride and red for Joy. His soulmate’s were red for Wrath and blue for Faith.

Mycroft, on the other hand, had double yellow bands on his left arm—both he and his soulmate had the vice of Greed. Mycroft’s virtue was Self-Control, however, and his soulmate’s was Kindness. Sherlock didn’t understand how anyone _kind_ could end up with Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft disdained kindness, considered it an emotional weakness, and he was slowly teaching Sherlock to believe the same.

“Having a soulmate doesn’t mean anything,” Mycroft told him. “Just because two people have compatible souls does not mean you should alter your life over it. Be your own person first, Sherlock, never just someone else’s soulmate. And above all, do not ever let them change you.” 

* * *

Harry was two years older than John and impossibly jealous of his soulmate bands.

It didn’t help that she hated her own bands. Her vice was orange for Gluttony. Gluttony was generally considered one of the ‘worse’ vices. They were all bad in theory, but Gluttony usually came with body issues, eating disorders, mental and physical health problems. Sometimes addiction. Gluttony didn’t always mean food, not necessarily.

Their parents both worried and watched Harry’s diet with hawk-like intensity. She hated it. She rebelled under the scrutiny, started sneaking out. She was fifteen when she started drinking.

In a way, her band had been a self-fulfilling prophecy, just not in the way anybody expected.

John looked at his red Wrath band and he worried.

His dad had a Wrath band too. He would get drunk, sometimes, and John and Harry would hide upstairs and listen to him scream at their mother. Sometimes he’d throw or break things, sometimes he’d hit her. One time he beat Harry a bit and hit John when he stepped in to defend her.

That was the scariest moment of John’s childhood. The violence itself was bad, of course, but worse than that—in his mind, at least—was that he finally understood why he had a Wrath band. He got it, now. He felt that blinding rage come over him like a red mask on his eyes and suddenly he wasn’t in control of his body anymore. He was doing things with no ability to stop them.

It was terrifying, to realize just how much like his dad he could be. 

* * *

Sherlock’s virtue was Joy.

He didn’t understand. His life had no joy as of yet.

He liked making his deductions well enough, but without any real challenges, there wasn’t much joy in it, just simple satisfaction of a minor problem solved. Like correctly doing a single math fact or something.

And he liked learning and his experiments were great, but school was horrible and the people were horrible and worse, they were stupid. Sherlock didn’t understand how he was expected to feel joy under these circumstances.

Pride, though, pride he understood. He embraced his vice with a vengeance.

He was destined to be prideful anyway, so why fight it? And after all, wasn’t it deserved? He was brilliant.

Mycroft was still the ‘smart’ one, but Sherlock refused to accept that he wasn’t astoundingly intelligent as well. He had to be, as everyone else around him was a moron.

Then Sherlock goes to uni and does cocaine for the first time and he feels startling, shocking joy. 

* * *

He’s been an addict for five years and he’s bored out of his skull in rehab, again, when he wonders why his vice isn’t Gluttony.

There are only two people in the facility who _don’t_ have Gluttony as their vice, Sherlock being one of them. The other is a twenty-something woman whose vice is Greed. Wealthy, upper class, kleptomaniac.

Greed was her vice because it was even worse than her Gluttony.

Logically, then, Sherlock’s Pride was far worse than his Gluttony. Either that, or it would have a more negative impact on his life.

Illogical. Doesn’t make sense. His Pride doesn’t hurt him one bit.

He does wish, sometimes, in his weaker moments, that he had any redeeming qualities aside from his intelligence. That his virtue wasn’t joy that he could only achieve through drugs. That his personality had literally any redeeming qualities.

He doesn’t quite understand his soul colors and he’s not sure he ever will. 

* * *

Lots of people in the military have a Wrath band on their left wrist, bright scarlet slipping out of beige uniform sleeves.

There are other vices too: Lust and Envy and Pride and all the others in smaller degrees. And for every vice, there is a virtue, every color in the rainbow shining on the right wrists of all the troops. They have Goodness and Love and Faith. The best soldiers are the ones marked with Peace or Self-Control.

But John is a soldier marked with Wrath.

His age and experience and medical degree quickly earn him the rank of Captain but he is always a doctor first and foremost. He takes his oath seriously, and his loyalty to his soldiers is fierce.

His virtue is Faith and he tells his soldiers that it’s meant for them. 

* * *

Sherlock gets clean, gets involved with the police, and begins his life’s Work.

It’s exhilarating, and for the first time ever, he feels true joy.

The Work. The Work, he decides, is his true soulmate.

* * *

John gets shot and sent back home. Home doesn’t feel like home and civilian life is unbearable. The bedsit is gray and drab and he wants to light it on fire. He cleans and polishes his gun nightly, and spends probably too long staring at it.

Harry intentionally drives Clara away in a fit of self-destruction and then gives John her phone. John doesn’t throw it in the Thames. He thinks that’s big of him.

He gives himself a fake limp that won’t go away no matter what he does and drives him bloody mad. He visits a crap therapist once a week and dreads the next appointment constantly. He has the constant itch of unused energy under his skin, a restlessness that aches for action he’ll never see again.

He’s been invalided away from the warzone. He’s seen his last bit of combat. He’s been shot in his dominant arm. He’ll never operate again.

John Watson had two dreams and both are shattered before he’s forty.

He knows he’s earned his Wrath, even if he never acts on it. Even if most of what he feels is directed at himself, or the universe at large. 

* * *

Mike Stamford introduces them on a fall day in a lab at St. Bart’s.

John offers his phone and the other man’s eyes sweep over him, lingering on his wrist. John’s eyes narrow, and he retracts his hand, covering his wrist almost subconsciously. He wears leather cuffs over his bands—a common trend—but not his soulmate’s. Almost no one with soulmate bands covers them. John isn’t actively hoping someone will recognize his soulmate colors, but he doesn’t see a reason to hide them either.

Besides, he lives in London and wears jumpers almost all the time. People usually only see his soulmate bands in sexual situations, and even then, he keeps his own cuffs on. Serious partners get to know what his bands are, casual ones do not.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” the man asked, not looking at John.

“Sorry?”

“Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?”

“Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you know—”

Molly walked back in with coffee. She always wore cuffs as well—feminine, usually soft material, preference for lace accents. Sherlock had long ago deduced that her soul colors were green and orange—Envy and Kindness. No soulmate bands.

Sherlock made no effort to hide any of his own bands whatsoever, and yet she continued on with her foolish crush.

He gave her a compliment/insult combo to keep her further confused about him. He found it very important to send her mixed signals. He was obviously gay, and did not desire her at all, but allowing her flirtation and fostering her false hope earned him professional favors.

He is fully aware that he is an asshole.

“How do you feel about the violin?” he asked.

“Sorry, what?”

“I play the violin when I’m thinking and sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

“You told him about me?” John asked Mike.

“Not a word,” he said.

“Who said anything about flatmates?”

“I did. I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t a difficult leap.”

“How did you know about Afghanistan?”

“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London,” he said, ignoring that. “Together we ought to be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow, 7:00. Sorry, got to dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

“Is that it?” he asked.

“Is that what?” Sherlock asked, pausing just before the door.

“We’ve only just met and we’re going to go look at a flat?”

“Problem?” he asked.

“We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name.”

Sherlock did restrain from smirking, barely.

“I know you’re an Army doctor. I know you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic and more likely because he recently walked out on his soulmate. I know your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic—quite correctly, I’m afraid. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?” he said. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

And then he fucking _winks._  

* * *

People judge each other for their soul colors. John knew this.

It’s over the vices, mainly, and it starts young.

Kids in school with the blue of laziness on their left wrists had lowered expectations and teachers who were harder on them and already thought of them as annoyances and failures. John had known an unfortunate Indian kid with a blue vice mark for whom it meant something totally different, but everyone just assumed he was a lazy piece of shit anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with people’s whose vice really is laziness. Everyone has their flaws, John knows.

He knows how people would look at Harry whenever she ate if she had her wrists uncovered. He knows the incessant comments about her weight she got, the constant debate over whether she needed to gain or lose some. He knows it messed up her mental image of herself, and to this day she has to fight against it.

He knows how girls with pink Lust marks are treated. How they’re singled out and thought of as sluts and sure things even when they’re way too young. How they’re more likely to be raped and less likely to be believed about it.

He knows how many parents freaked out when they saw his Wrath mark and forbade him from dating their daughters, branding him as a future abuser. He knows that the responsibility for any fight he ever gets in will fall solely on his shoulders. He knows why so many of his relationships failed as soon as they got serious—as soon as they saw his soul colors.

He knows that it’s just a little bit easier if your vice is something like Envy or Pride or Greed. The assumptions still suck, but they don’t fuck your entire life over—hell, they may just get you career advice.

When he meets Sherlock, he’s got his sleeves rolled up and no cuffs on, marked with Pride and Joy and additional soulmate bands, beautiful colors along his arms, ones no one would be ashamed of.

(A Wrathful soulmate isn’t good, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to be bothered. Maybe he gets it, gets that it doesn’t mean ‘abuser.’)

And he thinks he’s a lucky son of a bitch and a bit of a braggart.

Then he meets Sally Donovan and she gives him a new perspective.

“You know why he’s here?” she asked. “He’s not paid or anything. He likes it. He gets off on it. The weirder the crime, the more he gets off. His virtue mark is _Joy._ Joy over this sort of thing. Murder. And you know what? One day just showing up won’t be enough. One day we’ll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.”

Before Sherlock, John had never heard of anyone looking down on a virtue. Any virtue.

Before Sherlock, John had thought it was universally accepted that intelligence and joy were both very good things.

But then of course, Sherlock Holmes loves to prove people wrong. 

* * *

Sherlock’s soulmate marks match John’s soul colors.

And further, his soul marks match John’s soul _mate_ marks.

It could be a coincidence, and so John says nothing, and he keeps his own marks hidden. Sherlock tries to deduce them constantly, and John ignores him completely. He doesn’t confirm or deny anything. Sherlock is the type of bloke who could intuit far too much from any slightest information John gave him, and he made it very clear that first night at Angelo’s that he wanted nothing to do with his soulmate.

And besides, they probably aren’t.

People say you can tell. That everything is different with your soulmate. And things with Sherlock certainly are different, but John doesn’t feel that bone-deep certainty about it that he’s heard so many people wax poetic about.

So he concludes they aren’t soulmates and tries to forget about the coincidental match. 

* * *

“Your vice is Lust,” Sherlock announced. John refused to dignify that with a response, even in the form of simply looking up from his book.

“You seem unnaturally obsessed with sex,” he continued. “You insist upon dating even when you could be doing far more interesting things with me. You would not pass up working a case on the possibility of sex—as evidenced by the circus-date incident—but you would perhaps more strongly consider it if sex was a sure thing.”

John thought maybe Sherlock was asexual. He wasn’t sure though.

“And your virtue is Goodness,” he said decisively.

He offered no explanation on that one.

* * *

He guesses just about every combination there is. He predicts, varyingly, that John’s virtue is Patience, Peace, Mildness, Kindness, or most commonly, Goodness. It usually depends on the situation and Sherlock’s mood. He seems less surefooted when it comes to John’s vice, and only really suggests Lust, though John knows he considered Pride as well.

He supposes maybe he should be flattered, that Sherlock doesn’t see it. He’s learned to control himself well. He should be flattered. He should probably be flattered that Sherlock can barely see any vices in him, and his real one not at all.

* * *

Moriarty’s marks are Pride and Love, and he fixates both of those things on Sherlock, in an obsessive, dangerous combination.

He rips John’s cuffs off when he kidnaps him, pushes the sleeves of his jumper back, and glares fire at John’s soulmate marks.

And then he tries to burn them off. John screams that it’s a false match the entire time.

Sherlock takes him to the hospital, after all is said and done and Moriarty has left. The surgeons treat the burns and John needs skin grafts over what used to be his soulmate marks. The grafts take, and the marks grow back in in a few months.

Sherlock says nothing about his discovery of the match. 

* * *

Sometimes people’s soul colors make sense right away and seem to be the only combination that person could have ever possibly had, because of course they were. Other times, the colors seemed more and more right as you got to know someone. Such was the case with Mycroft Holmes, who—in true Holmesian fashion—did not cover his marks at all.

Unlike Sherlock, however, Mycroft always wore clothes around John, and so frequently his colors were covered, only the edges of his bands peeping out of his sleeves when at the right angle. Gold and indigo. Greed and Self-Control.

John suspected he was greedy for power rather than money, however.

And that first night, on the case with the pink, Lestrade had rolled up his right sleeve to reveal a nicotine patch, his virtue band, and that of his soulmate’s. Kindness orange for himself, Self-Control indigo for his soulmate.

John hadn’t made the connection. He hadn’t even thought Mycroft _had_ soulmate colors. But apparently Sherlock had, had known both of them were a perfect match, and had said nothing. He had even actively gone out of his way to prevent them from meeting on occasion.

But it had to happen eventually.

And it happened just before Baskerville.

Double shimmering metallic yellow on both their left forearms. Double colors happen, of course, sometimes, but they’re incredibly rare. Only 19.57% of the population even has a soulmate, even has the potential for matching colors. There was a 0.79% chance of getting any particular combination of four colors.

When put that way, for two people to meet with the exactly right combination and have it be a coincidental mismatch is almost incalculably improbable, especially given that everyone with a soulmate met them eventually. It was fate, after all.

Greg and Mycroft meet and immediately just _know_ they are soulmates. They begin a romantic relationship, Greg’s family life gets massively complicated and messy, and he ends up moving into Mycroft’s London townhouse with him.

Mycroft is right pissed that Sherlock had basically deduced it and said nothing, and so he visits daily just to annoy him, and takes to showing up at the Yard and occasionally crime scenes, but that’s to see Greg. Annoying Sherlock is just an added side effect.

Greg is dopily happy and Mycroft is flying on air, but hides it well.

They both have Greed as their vice. Ambition isn’t a sin, technically, but it translates as a form of greed. Lots of high-powered types have Greed as their vice—Greed or Pride. They’re sins that carry power in them so much that they’re hardly seen as sins. 

* * *

The only clothing Irene is wearing is a bit of lace on her wrists, completely see-through and ineffective as cuffs.

And yes, her sin is Lust.

But her virtue is Love. She has pink on both wrists, and John can’t help thinking that anyone who gets Love as the defining best aspect of their life is impossibly lucky.

She focuses her love on Sherlock, though, even when she must know he has a soulmate who isn’t her. And that just rubs John the wrong way. 

* * *

John never believed it for a second. Any of it.

Sherlock Holmes was not a fucking fraud.

But he was a bloody arsehole.

“Mrs. Hudson’s been shot,” John said, too tired and drained to put any emotion into the words.

“What? How?” Sherlock asked, equally emotionless, but in a much stiffer way.

“Well, probably one of the killers you managed to attract. Jesus. Jesus! She’s dying, Sherlock. Let’s go.”

“You go, I’m busy.”

“Busy?”

“Thinking, I need to think.”

“You need to—Doesn’t she mean anything to you?! You once half killed a man because he laid a finger on her!”

“She’s my landlady.”

“She’s dying, you _machine!_ Sod this. Sod this. You stay here if you want. On your own. Alone.”

“Alone is what I have. Alone protects me.”

“No, friends protect people,” John said, leaving finally.

It was horribly ironic, in a way. Sherlock finally had friends for the first time in his life, and they would be his downfall. It would leave him alone again.

* * *

“What’s going on?”

“An apology,” Sherlock said. “It’s all true.”

“What?”

“Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty.”

“…Why are you saying this?”

He knows he won’t get an answer. He knows that if Moriarty has found something big enough to use against Sherlock to make him do this, then it’s necessary. Nothing will stop this now, certainly not John.

“I’m a fake.”

“Sherlock—”

“The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson. And Molly. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you, that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”

“Okay, shut up, Sherlock, _shut up._ The first time we met. The first time we met, you knew all about my sister. Right?”

“Nobody could be that clever.”

“You could.”

He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I researched you,” he said. “Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you. It’s a trick. Just a magic trick.”

“No. Alright, stop it now.” He started moving.

“No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move.”

“Alright.”

“Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?”

“Do what?”

“This phone call, it’s, um… it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note?”

“Leave a note when?” He couldn’t believe this. He refused to.

“Goodbye, John.”

“No. Don’t.”

But he dropped the phone, and he did, and John’s heart fell with Sherlock right off the top of St. Bart’s hospital.

* * *

“There’s stuff that you wanted to say, but didn’t,” Ella said. “Say it now.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

The first person he tells he loves Sherlock Holmes is going to be that mad, bloody genius himself. If not, then he’ll take those words to his grave.

* * *

“I’m angry,” he said.

“It’s okay, John,” Mrs. Hudson said. “There’s nothing unusual in that. That’s the way he made everyone feel.”

Then she leaves and John tells Sherlock’s grave that he’ll never stop believing in him. Undying faith. That’s his virtue, isn’t it?

He vows that no matter what, he will always have faith in Sherlock. Someone needs to, and it’s the very least he deserves.

* * *

Mycroft betrayed his own brother to Moriarty when he had to know exactly how dangerous that man was and then Sherlock killed himself. So no, John is not on speaking terms with Mycroft Holmes. If he could, he’d have that bastard locked up for the rest of his life, but Mycroft has oh so many connections and John just doesn’t and there’s nothing he can really do. Legally.

Or illegally, if he’s honest. Besides, he wouldn’t do that to Sherlock’s parents. If the Holmes brothers had happened to be orphans, however, John seriously think he would have got out a sniper rifle and shown Mycroft Holmes how exactly he earned the title of Captain Watson, and damn the consequences. He’ll go to prison and live out the rest of the life that Sherlock never got.

But he doesn’t do that, because he isn’t actually stupid. Though it would be the least that either of them deserved. Instead, he moves out of 221B, calls Mrs. Hudson too infrequently, and the occasional drink at the pub with Greg becomes more and more strained and less and less often.

He gets a sad, desolate bedsit and everything becomes gray all over again.

* * *

Sherlock is captured in Brazil and tortured for days. They stab knives underneath his fingernails, yank teeth out from the back of his mouth, and waterboard him on occasion—usually whenever it looks like he might actually be exhausted enough to sleep. He only does that when he physically collapses and passes out nowadays.

He lasts three days under the torture before the plan wraps itself up and every alarm in the facility suddenly goes off. He grins up at his torturer, teeth stained with blood.

* * *

He meets a woman in Nairobi who has the matching marks to his soulmate colors, a coincidental match. He uses it to seduce and manipulate her in order to get inside her home. She catches him reading files on her computer, and tries to kill him.

Sherlock takes his first life.

* * *

There’s a small, worn barn in Nebraska, ten miles outside the nearest town and well into the woods, far away from any roads or farms. A man is operating a small-scale uranium purification operation out of it. But then, small scale is all you really need when it comes to uranium.

The man is a genius, possibly smarter than Sherlock or anyone else he’s ever met. Sherlock neutralizes the uranium and tosses the waste in a tin that he throws into a ditch. Then he burns the barn down.

The man dies in it, too, mysteriously. The local police suspect suicide.

* * *

A child in a rural farming village in Vietnam ends up drowning. Her father was a very bad man and used her as a hostage. Or tried to, anyway. It didn’t work.

One of Moriarty’s assassins and sponsored serial killers, still on the payroll courtesy of Sebastian Moran. Seventeen dead already, and dozens more victims chosen and targeted, all photographed and profiled in the man’s ‘workshop.’ One little girl is more than worth all those other lives.

There was no alternative. Sherlock is certain.

* * *

He gets frostbite in the Kamchatka Mountains and loses two and a half toes. An elderly hunter in a cabin kindly removes them for him and treats the wounds as best he can.

Sherlock steals food and money from him and bolts when he goes far enough away. He winds up on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. He works on it for three weeks before the crew drops him off in Nome. He hitchhikes into Nunavut and shuts down a multi-million dollar mining shell operation.

* * *

He gets in a gunfight in a small town in Chile, complete with a car chase that ended with a three-car pileup and a fourth tumbling off the side of a cliff.

He limps away from the accident as fast as he can, ears ringing and temporarily deaf, and they lose him in the crowd.

* * *

A building collapses in El Kharga. Sherlock just manages to get out in time.

If John were here, he would tell him it wasn’t his fault.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Sherlock is supposed to be smarter than this. He should have seen that coming. He should have deduced it. There were clear signs, in hindsight.

All those people.

Sherlock’s fault.

But what John would or wouldn’t say doesn’t matter because either way, he isn’t here.

* * *

In Mongolia, he makes another mistake, and they catch him. They cut the bottoms of his feet and stick them in a tub of urine. The burn of infection radiates halfway to his knees. He couldn’t walk at all the first few days, spends three weeks in a hospital under a fake name, a gun hidden with him at all times. Just in case.

It’s a miracle he didn’t need amputations.

* * *

He enjoys a brief but lucrative career as a business consultant in Wroclaw in order to make it into a board of directors meeting for a particular financial firm. The second the meeting starts, he drops his persona and tells them exactly what he knows and that he is wearing both a wire and a camera, transmitting all of this live. Five of the board members kill themselves on the spot, preferring that to capture. The Polish intelligence services come to pick up the rest.

* * *

He fucks up in Serbia as well and gets captured there too. Their form of torture is just standard beatings, starvation, and sleep deprivation. It’s almost startlingly mundane. They even give him water so he doesn’t die, and he manages to catch ten minutes of sleep on the fourth day. It’s enough to make the hallucinations stop.

Or so he thought, but then he was pretty sure he saw Mycroft enter the room, sit in a chair in the back, and watch him get tortured for half an hour. He slurs out whispered deductions that make his torturer flee home in a rage, and then Mycroft gets off his arse and talks to him, terrifyingly.

He breaks him out and then gives the order to have the compound gunned down by a fighter jet.

Sherlock passes out in the rescue helicopter.

* * *

He is taken to a safehouse in southern Finland, which is a real change from the last time he was in Scandinavia, briefly homeless on the streets of Ålesund for the Haugen drug smuggling case.

He eats as much as he can stomach, which is pitifully little, takes a luxuriously long and hot shower, sleeps for four hours, wakes up to eat again, and then sleeps nine more hours.

Mycroft insists he eat at least something again when he wakes up, and Sherlock guzzles down tea and coffee and takes another shower.

A barber is waiting for him when he gets out.

Mycroft reads over his notes from the mission while Sherlock catches up on the news.

“You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” he remarks. “Quite the busy little bee.”

“Moriarty’s network. Took me two years to dismantle it.”

“And you’re confident you have?”

“The Serbian side was the last piece of the puzzle.”

“Yes,” Mycroft mused. “You got yourself in deep there with Baron Maupertius. Quite a scheme.”

“Colossal.”

“Anyway. You’re safe now.”

“Hmm.”

“A small ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss.”

That’s absolutely bloody rich, considering Mycroft is the sole reason Sherlock got caught in Moriarty’s mess to begin with. Saving him from torture he wouldn’t have experienced in the first place if it hadn’t been for him hardly means that everything is forgiven now.

“What for?” Sherlock asked.

“For wading in. In case you’ve forgotten, field work is not my natural milieu.”

Sherlock waves off the barber and sits up carefully, seriously contemplating punching him. “’Wading in’?” he asked. Curious phrasing, implies he considers it a deeply personal favor that he came himself rather than just sending one of his agents. “You sat there and watched me being beaten to a pulp!”

“I got you out.”

“No, I got me out. Why didn’t you intervene sooner?”

“I couldn’t risk giving myself away, could I? It would have ruined everything.”

“You were enjoying it,” Sherlock deduced.

“Nonsense,” Mycroft scoffed, looking away from him.

“Definitely enjoying it.”

“Listen, do you have any idea what it was like, Sherlock, going undercover? Smuggling my way into their ranks like that? The noise, the people.” He shook his head.

Sherlock lowered himself back down slowly, mindful of his back. He couldn’t respond to that directly, anything he said would give too much away. The last thing he wanted was Mycroft’s pity, of all things. “I didn’t know you spoke Serbian,” he said instead, and then Mycroft started talking about that, and Sherlock tried to breathe.

* * *

Mary is beautiful, her blonde hair curled loose and close to her head in a way that is not at all familiar, her soul colors freely displayed and her dress matched perfectly to them. She smiles as she takes her seat, and they murmur nonsense pleasantries to each other.

“Now, then, what did you want to ask me?” she asked, as if she hadn’t already figured it out.

“…More wine?”

“No, I’m good with the water, thanks,” she said, looking at him expectantly.

He felt a surge of panic and suddenly wanted to back out and not ever, ever do this, but he couldn’t. No. He needed to do this. He had to.

“Right,” he said.

“…So?”

“Uh, so, Mary. Listen, um… I know it hasn’t been long, and I know we haven’t known each other for a long time…”

“Go on,” she said, smiling encouragingly.

“Yes. I will. As you know, these last couple of years haven’t been easy for me. And meeting you…” He paused. Sherlock being alive, coming back—

No. No, Sherlock Holmes was dead, and John had to move on. He had to.

“Yeah, meeting you has been the best thing that could have possibly happened,” he said.

“I agree.”

“What?”

“I agree, I’m the best thing that could have happened to you,” she said, her Pride clearly showing. She smiled. “Sorry, go on.”

“Well, it’s, um… So… If you’ll have me, Mary, could you see your way, um…” He cleared his throat, and she started giggling. “If you could see your way to…”

And then Sherlock bloody Holmes appeared, wearing a drawn-on mustache and no doubt stolen glasses, impersonating a waiter. Horrible fake French accent too, because of course. John tried to wave him away, but then.

Then he looked at him.

Sherlock took off his glasses, all his attention completely zeroed in on John. “Interesting thing, a tuxedo,” he said. “Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters.”

“John?” Mary asked.

He stood up from the table clumsily, his breath starting to go ragged.

“John, what is it? What—”

“Well, the short version,” Sherlock said. “Not dead. Bit mean springing it on you like that, I know. Could have given you a heart attack, probably still will. But in my defense, it was very funny.”

John looked murderous. He had gone completely still now, the way he did in combat situations.

“Okay, it’s not very funny,” Sherlock amended quickly.

“Oh no, you’re—” Mary started.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“Oh my god!”

“Not quite.”

“You died, you jumped off a roof.”

“No.”

“You’re dead.”

Okay, she was getting distracting now. “No, I’m quite sure, I checked. Excuse me,” he said dismissively. He dipped a napkin in a glass of water and wiped off his mustache. “Does yours rub off too?”

“Oh my god, oh my god! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” Mary asked. Bit rude, especially when Sherlock was so pointedly ignoring her.

“Okay, John, I’m suddenly realizing I probably owe you some sort of an apology.”

John’s fist slammed into the table of its own accord.

“Alright, just—John, just keep—” Mary started.

 _“Two years,”_ he said. He shook his head and breathed. “Two years. I thought… I thought. You were dead. Mm? Now, you let me grieve. Hm? How could you do that? How?”

“Wait. Before you do anything you might regret, um, one question, just let me ask one question,” he said. “Are you really going to keep that?” He grinned and gestured to his lip.

John rushed him and grabbed him by the lapels. He pushed him across the room, threw him to the ground, and tried to choke the living daylights out of him before about five people pulled him off.

They were asked to leave the restaurant.

* * *

“Who else? Who else knew?”

“Molly.”

“Molly?”

“John—” Mary said.

“Molly Hooper and some of my homeless network and that’s all.”

“Okay. Okay,” John said. “So just your brother, Molly Hooper, and a hundred tramps.”

“No!” Sherlock said, laughing. “Twenty-five at most.”

John knocked over the table in his haste to get at Sherlock’s throat.

He got a good few punches in this time, one of them hard enough to split Sherlock’s lip.

* * *

“You have missed this, admit it,” Sherlock said. “The thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins, just the two of us against the rest of the world.”

John grabbed him and headbutted him.

* * *

He deduces Mary.

Lover, part-time nurse, guardian, dem/lib, clever, linguist, bakes own bread, shortsighted, liar, only child, romantic, appendix removed + scar, tattoo, cat lover, secret, disillusioned, size 12.

The most interesting of John’s girlfriends so far. She might just stick around.

And while Sherlock does not approve of nor support John’s dating, he does want to deduce far more about her, including her secret and whatever she is lying about. Plus, he has a lot to apologize and make up for. So best not to scare this one off, though he easily could.

* * *

His fingernails grew back in, firmly attached, months ago. His back will have a smattering of scars on it from the cuts, once they heal. Getting thrown repeatedly to the ground caused most of the wounds to reopen, and Sherlock started bleeding through the back of his dress shirt, but the tuxedo jacket hid it all from view.

He buys first aid supplies at a drug store and patches himself up in the bathroom of 221B, gasping and biting his lip when the antiseptic hits the cuts.

He sits down and carefully, slowly removes his shoes and socks. The infection is mostly gone now, but still there on his feet. The partial toe amputations have healed up nicely, but the cuts were deep, worse than the ones on his back by far. He pulls out a small tube of anti-infection ointment and rubs it on up to his ankles, emptying the entire thing out. His feet ache and burn, and he winces.

John didn’t actually break his nose, thankfully, and the cut on his lip is minor. He got another punch on his cheek that hasn’t had time to bruise yet, but will in the morning. Mrs. Hudson will fuss. He’ll just have to tell her it was from a case. There will be extensive bruising around his neck, but that should be easy enough to hide.

All in all, it went worse than he expected, but better than he deserved.

He’s so shocked when Lestrade reacts by hugging him that he doesn’t even know how to respond.

* * *

 

Sherlock deduces that Janine is marked with Wrath and Patience at the wedding, and distracts himself by deducing the vices and virtues of various other men in attendance for her to decide if she wants to bother with them.

She gives a hard pass on a man colored with Wrath and Faith, another with Laziness and Mildness, and one marked Lust and Joy. Sherlock teaches her how to dance, and she is abysmal.

Mary is pregnant, and he deduces that too. He briefly wonders what the child will be like, what their colors will be. They’ll likely be blonde and blue-eyed no matter what, but will they be kind? Good? Brave and firm in their morals like their father?

A liar like their mother?

And Sherlock likes Mary, really, he does. She makes John happy, and John loves her, so Sherlock has to at least like her.

He doesn’t even know what it is she’s lying about, he reminds himself firmly. It could be anything. It could be something totally innocent but embarrassing. What is he going to do, go to John and tell him his new wife is hiding _something_ from him? It’s not like he knows everything about her. And she doesn’t know everything about him. That’s to be expected, and they both have a right to their individual privacy.

Sherlock just hopes the baby is actually John’s.

* * *

 

He calls Mycroft, while at the reception.

“I suppose I’ll be seeing a lot more of you from now on.”

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked.

“It’ll be just like old times.”

“No, I don’t understand,” he said, even though a sliver of fear in his chest understood perfectly.

“Oh, it’s the end of an era, isn’t it? John and Mary. Domestic bliss.”

“No no no. I prefer to think of it as the beginning of a new chapter.” He tended to get poetic when he was lying. It was his worst, most obvious tell. The more sincere he was, the more bluntly and pragmatically he spoke.

Mycroft said nothing, damning in his silence.

“What?” Sherlock snapped.

“Nothing.”

“I know that silence. What?”

“Well, I’d better let you get back to it. You have a big speech or something, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Cakes. Karaoke. Mingling.”

“Mycroft!”

“This is what people do, Sherlock. They get married. I warned you. Don’t get involved.”

“Involved? I’m not involved.”

“No.”

“John asked me to be his best man. How could I say no?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m not involved.”

“I believe you. Really, I do. Have a lovely day and do give the happy couple my best.”

“I will.”

“Oh, by the way, Sherlock. Do you remember Redbeard?”

“I’m not a child anymore, Mycroft.”

“No, of course you’re not. Enjoy not getting involved, Sherlock.”

* * *

 

He leaves the wedding early, like Mrs. Hudson’s maid of honor and former best friend did.

It is the end of an era, moreso than the fall was.

He goes to the nearest dealer and buys some of his favorite substance. He goes home and shoots up for the first time in years.

It feels horrible and brilliant all at once.

* * *

 

John finds him in a drug den a month later—the first time he’s seen him since—and screams the entire way to the car, then directs Mary to drive them to Bart’s.

He pees in a jar as ordered, and Molly slaps him repeatedly.

John says he should have called and talked to him and Sherlock—very maturely—does not laugh bitterly at that. He tells them it’s all for a case.

And it’s… It’s helping, for a case, at least. It’s definitely not the reason he relapsed, but he is working a case in which him doing drugs is an important factor, so. Close enough. 

* * *

John doesn’t know why, but he physically cringes, barely restrains from gagging and choking, and is absolutely forced to look away when Janine starts kissing Sherlock. It’s just _wrong._

He was like 95% sure that Sherlock was gay after their conversation the first night in Angelo’s, but hey, what did John know? Apparently not that.

And then he has the gall to be appalled when John wants to talk about the first relationship he has ever seen Sherlock have in the entire time he has known him (and with a woman, no less) instead of whatever hellish case he’s working.

* * *

“Claire de la lune. Why do I know that?” Sherlock asked.

“Mary wears it,” John said.

“No, not Mary, somebody else.”

And then he rushed off upstairs, leaving John to tend to Janine.

“—coming here? What would your husband think? He—Your lovely husband. He’s honorable. What would he say to you now?” Magnussen’s voice shook as he begged for his life. He was kneeling on the floor, hands above his head.

The assassin cocked her gun.

“You’re doing this to protect him from the truth? What is this obsession here with honesty?”

“Additionally, if you’re going to commit murder, you might consider changing your perfume, Lady Smallwood,” Sherlock said, stepping into the room.

“Sorry, who?” Magnussen said. “That’s not Lady Smallwood, Mr. Holmes.”

Mary turned around.

She pointed the gun at Sherlock.

She considered.

“Is John with you?”

“He’s, um…”

“Is John here?”

“He’s downstairs.”

Mary nodded, accepting. That changed things. John being here might mean Sherlock’s life or death. He couldn’t compute it though, couldn’t even process how that might affect things, if it would have smarter to lie or not.

“So what do you do now?” Magnussen asked. “Kill us both?”

“Mary, whatever he’s got on you, let me help.”

“Oh, Sherlock, if you take one more step, I swear I will kill you.”

That was ridiculous. Preposterous to think about. Mary, John’s wife Mary, who Sherlock actually liked, whose virtue was Self-Control, would never shoot him.

“No, Mrs. Watson,” he said. “You won’t.”

He moved and she shot him.

* * *

“You don’t tell him. Sherlock,” she sang. “You don’t tell John. Look at me. And tell me you’re not going to tell him.”

It was a threat and they both knew it.

* * *

Janine’s vice was bright red scarlet Wrath, and she damn well proved it.

“I’m buying a cottage,” she said, flipping through newspapers. Gossip rags.

SHAG-A-LOT HOLMES

SEVEN TIMES A NIGHT IN BAKER STREET

HE MADE ME WEAR THE HAT

And those were just the highlights.

“I made a lot of money out of you, mister,” Janine said. “Nothing hits the spot like revenge with profits.”

* * *

“You were very slow,” Mary said.

She’d expected him to catch her, then. Early on, too. She’d had plans in place, she’d never thought it would get this far.

She’d known Sherlock would find out and she’d stayed anyway. Unforgivably vain, nearly a fatal mistake.

The frailty of genius: the need for an audience. The clever ones are always so desperate to get caught.

Sherlock is shockingly disappointed in himself, no doubt almost as badly as Mary is disappointed in him. He hardly put on a good performance, here. He made biased assumptions that didn’t fit the data, and failed to put together the puzzle that was right in front of him. Not his best work, not by a long shot.

He deserved that bullet, didn’t he? She wouldn’t have had to shoot him if he had just been smarter.

“How good a shot are you?”

“How badly do you want to find out?” she asked, unholstering and cocking a handgun. She didn’t aim it.

“If I die here, my body will be found in a building with your face projected on the front of it; even Scotland Yard could get somewhere with that. I want to know how good you are. Go on, show me. The doctor’s wife must be a little bit bored by now.”

She tossed a coin in the air and shot straight through it.

Sherlock stepped out and Mary glanced back at what she thought was him before. “A dummy?” she asked.

 _Yes,_ John thought. _Yes, I think I am._


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for drug overdose and suicide ideation

Mycroft’s voice was blaring across the lawn and helicopter blades chopped loudly through the air and searchlights spun around. SIS agents were closing in, semi-automatics drawn, shouting information to each other through their radios.

Sherlock’s ears were buzzing.

He needed to think he needed to think he needed to think.

The facts. The facts, Magnussen had laid them out very clearly, sentiment boiled down to objective, clinical statements. He had to have missed some, however. Sherlock had a more nuanced understanding of the situation.

Mary was in danger. Magnussen was the source of that danger.

John loved Mary. Sherlock loved John. They were soulmates. John had known about the match for almost a year without saying a single word about it to Sherlock, going out of his way to hide it, even. John had made no attempts to discuss the matter, even after it became clear that Sherlock knew. He vehemently denied that they were a couple to anyone who would listen. He continued to date woman after woman after woman and insist he wasn’t gay. He even married one of them.

Sherlock may be his soulmate, but it was clear that he had been judged and found lacking. John still wore cuffs, for God’s sake. It would be more than reasonable to assume he wasn’t just disappointed with the match, but outright ashamed of it. Ashamed of Sherlock.

Sherlock was lucky John considered him even worthy of his friendship. It was a miracle that someone like him had a soulmate. It was even more of a miracle that they wanted anything to do with him.

John was amazing, John was everything, Sherlock had been completely gone on him since the first case with the pink and had never dared hope… But yes. Sherlock Holmes, who had always disdained and derided the notion of soulmates, had found his and fallen head-over-heels in love. He would take whatever scraps of affection he could get.

It was more than he deserved, anyway. Any of it. All of it. He had treated John horribly and taken him for granted and caused him untold grief for years.

He owed him.

The least he could do was save his wife, the woman he loved, the one he had chosen.

_Think!_

Mary was in danger. Magnussen was the source of that danger.

No. Correction. Magnussen’s information was the danger. It didn’t matter who had it. Anyone who knew could do much the same, but for all intents and purposes, that was limited to just Magnussen and Mary. The man himself was harmless. His threat was exposure, the danger of telling others, of luring in true threats.

Magnussen was useless. His information was dangerous.

“To clarify, Appledore’s vaults only exist in your mind?” he asked, now confident. He had a plan. He was terrified, but he had a plan.

For John.

“Nowhere else. Just there?” he continued.

“They’re not real. They never have been.” Magnussen didn’t even look at him, to focused on Mycroft. John and Sherlock were no longer threats in his eyes. Inconsequential.

“Sherlock, what do we do?” John asked.

“Nothing. There’s nothing to be done,” Magnussen said. “Oh, I’m not a villain. I have no evil plan. I’m a businessman, acquiring assets. You happen to be one of them. Sorry. No chance for you to be a hero this time, Mr. Holmes.”

His blood was thudding in his ears. He knew what this meant. What he was doing, what he was giving up.

“Oh, do your research,” he said. He reached around John’s waist into his coat pocket and pulled out his gun, and John just let him.

He had to know, didn’t he? Surely even John could tell where this was going?

“I’m not a hero. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Merry Christmas!”

* * *

“So what about you, then? Where are you actually going now?”

“Oh, some undercover work in eastern Europe.”

“For how long?”

“Six months, my brother estimates,” he said. “He’s never wrong.”

 _But he will be this time,_ he doesn’t add.

“And then what?”

Sherlock bit his lip. “Who knows?”

John nodded, anger underlying his movements. Sherlock suspected he understood all too well what wasn’t being said.

“John, there’s something…” he started. He swallowed. “Something I should say, I’ve meant to say always and I never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.”

No reason not to.

Absolutely no reason not to.

He had to, he just had to, like ripping off a bandaid, just say the words—

“Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.”

John smiled and laughed, and really, wasn’t that better than anything else he could have done? The tears or horror or anger if Sherlock had said the actual words?

It was better this way. It was.

Ignorance was bliss. Sherlock was fairly certain that John thought him incapable of love. Why should he disabuse him of the notion?

He tried to smile back and he got on the plane.

* * *

It takes a hell of a lot of determination for an addict with Sherlock’s tolerance levels to overdose in just four minutes. Determination, money, and advance preparation.

Fortunately, Sherlock had all that in spades.

John cursed and swore at him and herded him into Mycroft’s towncar, directing the driver to go to the nearest hospital as fast as he could.

* * *

He’s in the hospital for three weeks. The doctors use drug substitutes in a futile attempt to wean him off, slowly and compassionately, and John purses his lips and makes snappish comments.

He shows up to the D-notice meeting high as a bloody kite.

* * *

Baker Street is all packed up in boxes and labelled. Clothes to be sent to charity, science equipment to schools, various kitchen apertures to Mrs. Hudson. Personal effects and a letter to Mycroft. A different letter to John.

John helps lug his abused body up the steps to 221B, but he goes still and silent when he walks inside. Sherlock can see his mind racing, drawing the obvious conclusion. His face is pale, clammy. He looks like he wants to speak but can’t bring himself to.

Sherlock stumbles across the room and shoves logs into the fireplace. He grabs both letters and rips them up with shaking fingers, dropping the pieces on the logs. He drizzles kerosene over it all and ignites it with a lighter.

John is still unnaturally pale but now he looks less shaken and more stoically horrified. Determined.

God knows what over.

* * *

He solves case after case after case and pumps himself full to bursting with drugs. He overloads his schedule, only stopping to eat or sleep or use the bloody restroom when his body absolutely demands it. There isn’t room in his head for a single thought not taken up by cases. There isn’t time in the day.

One day, he passes out alone in 221B. He hadn’t eaten in three days or slept in two.

He writes it off as having stood up too suddenly.

John makes disapproving remarks about him “spinning plates” and Sherlock just grins and keeps on going. He has to. He has to.

John doesn’t live here anymore and he has more important people in his life and the only reason he stops by Baker Street at all is for the adrenaline rush that the cases provide. Sherlock is enigmatic and brilliant and a whirlwind and he tamps down on his more… undesirable characteristics.

He holds his tongue and makes play at pleasantries and explains all his deductions at a mile a minute. John doesn’t praise him as “brilliant” or “amazing” as he used to, though.

Sherlock is terrified and running ragged. He knows he can’t compete with Mary. With a woman and domesticity and the promise of children. He knows that John has just about exhausted the full run of Sherlock’s secrets, has learned almost everything worth knowing about him.

For all that everyone thought Sherlock would get bored of John, he knows, deep down, it’ll be the other way around.

Sherlock doesn’t complain about being bored. He doesn’t give himself the time. He fills it all with cases. Suddenly, no case is too simple or too boring. None of them are beneath him.

John keeps coming over.

Sherlock keeps shooting up.

* * *

Rosie is born, perfectly healthy and perfectly perfect, with two bright red bands in tiny circlets around her wrists.

Wrath and Joy.

And two more, farther down: purple and pink, Pride and Love. Soulmate bands.

John was insufferably, beautifully, proud for weeks. Sherlock tried hard to be indifferent.

But he fell for Rosie even faster than he fell for John.

He would see Mary holding her and cooing and get the oddest twinge in his chest, which he furiously clamped down on. He liked Mary. She was a good mother.

And Sherlock would be content being Rosie’s godfather/strange uncle figure.

He would.

For John and Rosie both.

He would take what he could get. He wouldn’t let on that he cared even a little bit.

* * *

He has a bad feeling.

Constantly.

It isn’t paranoia. Or so he tells himself, while looking over his shoulder and investigating absolutely everything.

_Miss me?_

No. God no.

Moriarty is the demon terror locked in chains in a padded cell in his mind palace and Sherlock hates that he has eaten out a space for himself there and during his two years on the run, enduring intermittent torture, his only solace had been that at least the bastard was dead. He couldn’t hurt him anymore.

He does so hate being wrong.

Post-humous game. He pretends to be thrilled. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.

* * *

“God, I just wanted a bit of peace, and I really thought I had it.”

The emotion in her words was annoyance. Annoyance at a disruption, an inconvenience, a change of plans. No remorse, no terror. Not even sadness.

And already using past tense.

“No. Mary. You do,” Sherlock said, a bit desperate.

John. Rosie.

They all needed Mary.

“I made a vow, remember? To look after the three of you.”

“Sherlock, the dragon-slayer,” she said flatly.

“Stay close to me and I will keep you safe from him, I promise you.”

“There’s something I think you should read,” she said, pulling a slip of paper from her coat. Information? Something he didn’t already know? Bit dangerous to carry that around with her always, wasn’t it? How long had she had it on her, just waiting, just in case?

“What is it?”

“I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

He opened it quickly. “What are you—”

The world went fuzzy around the edges and spun as he was lowered to the ground.

* * *

Mary left, left John and her newborn baby. Didn’t even say goodbye in person.

So much worse than a breakup over text.

She said she would come back. Eventually, someday. She asked John to wait. To put his life on hold until she felt safe to return.

And it was a good thing that neither John nor Sherlock trusted her as far as they could throw her and had put a tracker in the memory stick before they even told her about it.

* * *

“AGRA.”

“Yes.”

“You said it was your initials.”

“…In a way, that was true.”

“In a way?” he said, dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t believe this. “So many lies.”

“I’m so sorry.”

John didn’t even acknowledge that, he was so sure it was false. “I don’t just mean you.”

“What?”

“Alex, Gabriel, Ajay—You’re R.”

She nodded.

“Rosamund?”

“Rosamund Mary,” she said. “I always liked Mary.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “I used to.”

* * *

“Well, you handled the operation in Tbilisi very well,” Sherlock said.

“Thanks,” Mrs. Norbury said.

“For a secretary,” he continued.

“What?”

“Can’t have been easy all those years, sitting in the back, keeping your mouth shut, when you knew you were cleverer than most of the people in the room.”

“I didn’t do this out of jealousy.”

“No?” he asked. “Green Envy band on your left wrist, very telling. Even without it, the same old drudge, day in, day out? Never getting out there where all the excitement was. Just back to your little flat on Wigmore Street.”

She gaped.

“They’ve taken up the pavement on the post office there. The local clay on your shoes is very distinctive. Yes, your _little_ flat.”

“How do you know?”

“Wel;ll, on your salary, it would have to be modest, and you spent all the money on that cottage, didn’t you? And what are you, widowed or divorced? Wedding ring’s at least thirty years old, and you’ve moved it to another finger. That means you’re sentimentally attached to it. But you’re not still married. I favor widowed, given the number of cats you share your life with.”

“Sherlock?” Mary said, warning clear, not taking her eyes off Mrs. Norbury.

“Two Burmese and a tortoiseshell, judging by the cat hairs on your cardigan. A divorcee’s more likely to look for a new partner; a widow to fill the void left by her dead husband.”

“Sherlock, don’t.”

“—Pets do that, or so I’m told. And there’s clearly no one new in your life, otherwise you wouldn’t be spending your Friday nights alone in an aquarium. That probably accounts for the drink problem too. The slight tremor in your hand. The red wine stain ghosting your top lip. So yes. I’d say jealousy was your motive, after all. To prove how good you are. To make up for the inadequacies of your _little_ life.”

Other people entered the room.

“Well, Mrs. Norbury,” Mycroft said. “I must admit, this is unexpected.”

“Vivian Norbury. You outsmarted them all,” Sherlock said. “All except Sherlock Holmes.” He held out his hand graciously, ready to accept the gun. High on the power of his own genius. Perception clouded thick with Pride. “There’s no way out.”

“So it would seem,” she said. “You see right through me, Mr. Holmes.”

“It’s what I do.”

She smiled. “Maybe I can still surprise you.”

Nothing to lose. No way out. Armed. Sherlock had just spent five minutes intentionally goading her. He was only a little bit high and still he knew exactly how this was going to end.

She raised the gun.

“Come on, be sensible,” Lestrade said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

She fired.

Sherlock stood completely still, a waiting target.

_That’s what targets do._

Mary moved instead.

She may not like Sherlock, but she loved John enough to know he didn’t deserve to witness his suicide twice.

* * *

“Don’t you dare,” John hissed. “You made a vow. You swore it.”

Sherlock was falling apart at the seams and he felt those words like a blow to the heart.

* * *

John didn’t perform first aid.

John, army medic and trauma surgeon, did not perform first aid on his dying wife.

* * *

“Nothing will ever be the same again, will it?” Mrs. Hudson asked, sniffling. Her bands peeped through the sleeves of her cardigan: pink and green, Lust and Mildness.

“I’m afraid it won’t,” Sherlock said, aiming for gentility. False gentility, to be specific. His voice had wanted to waver and he firmly refused to let it.

People thought he only shammed emotions. They never thought he shammed _not_ having them.

“We’ll have to rally around, I expect, do our bit. Look after little Rosie.”

Sherlock stood on weak limbs. He felt buzzy and dissonant, and he was even sober right now, which made it especially concerning.

He needed to eat, perhaps.

He wasn’t going to fucking eat. Why should he have food when Mary didn’t even have breath? He had killed John’s wife, broken his heart. Again. Out of a selfish desire to die. To have someone make that choice for him so that it wasn’t technically suicide.

It needed to be an accident. Unavoidable, and at another’s hand. He wouldn’t put John through the same thing twice. He wouldn’t.

But if something unpreventable should just happen to kill him…

Well.

“I’m just going to, erm…” He swallowed. “Look through these things. There might be a case.”

“A case? Oh, you’re not up to it, are you?”

“…Work is the best antidote to sorrow, Mrs. Hudson.”

* * *

“I just… wondered how things were going, you know?” Sherlock said hesitantly. “And if there was anything I could do to help?”

Molly pulled an envelope out of her back pocket. “It’s, er… It’s from John.”

“Right.”

A death knell, ringing in his chest. Pounding.

“You don’t need to read it now,” Molly said, more firm suggestion than anything. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. He says… John said, if you were to come around, asking after him, offering to help…”

“Yes?”

“He—said… That he’d rather have anyone but you,” she said. “Anyone.”

He lingered there on the doorstep for a moment. Just a moment.

He wasn’t surprised.

* * *

 

Death waits for everyone in Samarra and Sherlock Holmes is trying desperately hard to avoid it.

Except, sometimes, he wonders why.


	3. Part 3

“Tell me about your morning,” his new, not-Ella therapist said. “Start from the beginning.”

“I woke up.”

“How did you sleep?”

“I didn’t. I don’t.”

“You just said you woke up.”

“I stopped lying down,” he corrected.

Snappish. He was snappish lately.

His Wrath was coming out even in little moments and it didn’t seem like he had any control over the matter. Not that he was trying particularly hard.

After all, he had decided long ago that he had earned his Wrath. So why shouldn’t he show it?

“Alone?”

“Of course alone.” He blinked.

“I meant Rosie. Your daughter.”

Short blonde curls and blue eyes and Valentines-colored bands. Of course.

“Uh, she’s with friends.”

“Why?” She didn’t miss a beat.

“Can’t always cope,” he said. “And last night wasn’t good.”

He’d downed an entire bottle of hard liquor, alone, in the dark, something Harry had only done on her very worst days, but it was the third time John had done so this month.”

“It’s understandable.”

“Is it, why? Why is it understandable?” he asked. “Why does everything have to be understandable? Why can’t some things be unacceptable? And we just say that?”

“I only mean it’s okay.”

“I’m letting my daughter down,” he enunciated slowly. “How the hell is that okay?”

“You just lost your wife.”

“And Rosie just lost her mother.”

* * *

Sherlock lets himself go and turns away cases, to the point where Lestrade stops coming around. He isn’t sure when it shifts (must have been high off his arse when it happened) but suddenly that reverses and Lestrade visits every day, sometimes with Mycroft, pleading for him to take a case and trying to make each one seem especially enticing.

He promises to keep Anderson and Donovan off the scene. He makes offers with and without Mycroft there. He tells Sherlock he doesn’t even care if he shows up high, if he would just please leave the flat, even just for half an hour.

He offers to call John. Get him to come.

Sherlock perks up but says nothing. Lestrade beams and goes into the kitchen to make the call.

He comes back grim-faced. He doesn’t make that offer again.

Sherlock says nothing and sinks further into the couch. He’s wearing sweat-crusted clothes from three days ago and all he’s had all day was tea, biscuits, and cocaine. Yesterday, he hadn’t had anything, at all, not even a sip of water.

He hasn’t left the flat since he returned to it. Since his conversation with Molly on John’s doorstep. He hasn’t showered or shaved either. Doesn’t trust himself with a razor.

He lays on the couch. He stares off into the distance. He texts Bill Wiggins when he needs another hit.

He isn’t bored anymore.

He so wishes that he could go back to being bored.

* * *

“Chips,” he said decisively.

“Chips?” Faith asked.

He was so tired, and it showed in his voice. He dragged a coat onto his body with supreme effort. “You’re suicidal. You’re allowed chips. Trust me, it’s about the only perk.”

He winced as a stab of pain sliced through the center of his skull.

God, whatever cheap crack Billy had bought for him must have been laced with something, who the hell knows what? Fuck.

“Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson called. “Are you going out?”

“I think I remember the way. It’s through there, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re in a state! Look at you!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a friend with me, so.”

“What friend?”

“Bye!”

* * *

“Nevermind how. He’s dying to tell us that. I want to know,” John said, seething.

“Because Mrs. Hudson’s right. I’m burning up,” Sherlock said. “I’m at the bottom of a pit and I’m still falling, and I’m never climbing out. I need you to know, John, I need you to see that up here—I’ve still got it. So, when I tell you that this is the most dangerous, the most despicable human being that I have ever encountered—When I tell you that this, this _monster_ must be ended, _please_ remember where you’re standing.  Because you’re standing exactly where I said you would be two weeks ago.”

He sat down heavily, scrunching his eyes shut at the pain. “I’m a mess, I’m in hell, but I am not wrong, not about him.”

John folded his arms. “So what does all this got to do with me?”

“That creature, that rotting _thing_ is a living, breathing coagulation of human evil. If the only thing I ever do in this world is drive him out of it, then my life will not have been wasted. Look at me! Can’t do it, not now. Not alone.”

John held out his hand, and Sherlock stood and took it—only for John to turn his wrist around and roll up the sleeve.

“Well, they’re real enough, I suppose.”

“Why would I be faking?”

“Because you’re a liar! You lie all the time, it’s like your mission.”

“I have been many things, John, but when have I _ever_ been a malingerer?”

“You pretended to be dead for two years!”

“Apart from that.”

“Listen, before I do anything, I need to know what state you’re in.”

“Well, you’re a doctor. Examine me.”

“No, I need a second opinion.”

Sherlock sighed. “John, calm down. When have you ever managed two opinions? You’d fall over.”

“I need the one person who, unlike me, learnt to see through your bullshit long ago.”

“Who’s that, then? I’m sure I would have noticed.”  


“The last person you’d think of,” he said. “I want you to be examined by Molly Hooper.”

* * *

“Well, how is he?”

“Basically fine,” Sherlock said.

“I’ve seen healthier people on the slab,” Molly said, both voice and eyes flat.

“Yeah, to be fair, you work with murder victims. They tend to be quite young.”

“Not funny.”

“Little bit funny.”

“If you keep taking what you’re taking at the rate you’re taking it, you’ve got weeks.”

“Exactly. Weeks. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock! It’s not a game!”

“I’m worried about you, Molly. You seem very stressed.”

“I’m stressed, you’re dying.”

“Yeah, well I’m ahead, then. Stress can ruin every day of your life. Dying can only ruin one.”

“So this is real,” John said. “You’ve really lost it. You’re actually out of control.”

“When have I ever been that?”

“Since the day I met you.”

“Clever boy. Missed you fumbling ‘round the place.”

“Thought this was some kind of—”

“What?”

“Trick,” he said, meeting Sherlock’s eyes levelly.

“Course it’s not a trick. It’s a plan.”

* * *

“Need another hit?” John asked.

“It can wait until the hospital.”

_Barely._

* * *

“Stop laughing at me!”

“Sherlock!” John grabbed him by the arm and brought his elbow down on his wrist, effectively knocking the scalpel from his grasp. He grabbed Sherlock by the lapels and shoved him up against the wall. “Stop it! Stop it now!”

“What are you doing? Wake up!” He slapped him, hard. Sherlock’s head twisted against the metal door.

He punched him hard enough to knock him down, then threw in a kick for good measure. “Is this a game?! A bloody game!”

And he kept beating him. And beating him. And beating him.

Medics rushed in to pull John off, but he kept kicking the whole way, straining towards Sherlock’s body.

“Please, please, no violence!” Smith called.

Sherlock lay on the floor, dripping blood all over, shaky and barely conscious.

“Thank you, Dr. Watson. I don’t think he’s a danger anymore,” Smith said. “Leave him be.”

“No,” Sherlock said weakly, barely supporting himself on his elbows. Trying to keep his face out of the pool of blood and spit beneath him. “It’s-it’s okay. Let him do what he wants. He’s entitled. I killed his wife.”

John breathed heavily. “Yes, you did.”

He had never…

Of course. Of course he should have expected John to agree. It was true, wasn’t it?

He killed Mary. John was entitled to beat him.

Those three words hurt almost as much as the punches and kicks, though. But he knew the beating wasn’t bad enough to kill him. Not even to make him black out.

Instead, he watched John turn his back and walk away.

His only friend. His first and last love. His soulmate.

It would be nice, he thought, to die by John’s hand. There’s no other way he’d rather go.

And he would deserve it, too. Every second of it. As much pain as John could possibly dole out, until the shock of it killed Sherlock and they were finally, finally even. His debt repaid.

He owed so much and it could only ever possibly be paid in blood.

* * *

“I have a question for you. Why are you here? It’s like you walked into my den and laid down in front of me. Why?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“I’d like to hear you say it. Say it for me, please.”

“I want you to kill me.”

* * *

_“The only way to save John is to make him save you.”_

She told him to put himself in the firing line with no safety net and just hope for the best. Or die trying.

And for his soulmate, for John, Sherlock would.

_“Go to hell, Sherlock. Go right into hell and make it look like you mean it.”_

* * *

Sherlock was severely malnourished, in double kidney failure, absolutely covered in contusions, and one of his eyes was shot with blood from the attempted strangulation.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

John laughed.

“No, I’m not okay. I’m never gonna be okay. We just have to accept that. It is what it is. And what it is… is shit,” he said. He sighed. “You didn’t kill Mary.”

Sherlock looked up sharply.

“Mary died saving your life. It’s her choice. No one made her do it, no one could ever make her do anything. But the point is, you did not kill her.”

“In saving my life, she conferred a value on it,” he said. “It is a currency I do not know how to spend.”

“It is what it is,” he said. “Tomorrow, six ‘til ten. I’ll see you then.”

“Looking forward to it.”


End file.
